Product management at 18F, part 2 - Acquisitions

This is the second of a series of blog posts that will provide a glimpse into what it’s like to be a product manager at 18F.

In the previous post,
we wrote about how product management works in Path Analysis and
Experiment & Iterate phases. In this post, we’ll discuss how 18F product
managers support our partner agencies who are procuring the services
of industry contractors to help achieve their mission.

Many government programs don’t have the in-house staff needed to deliver
modern digital services, so they depend on outside contractors. The
process of bringing in these external resources is called
acquisitions. 18F helps build the government’s capacity to identify
the right contractors and work hand-in-hand with them to deliver the
best products using agile, human-centered, and open source methodologies.

Our team of government acquisitions professionals work to design
government contracts that support an agile approach to digital services.
We advocate for a “modular contracting” approach — small, short-term
contracts that allow us to build prototypes, test hypotheses, and
iterate, rather than big, risky, multi-million dollar contracts that
require a waterfall approach.

When they work on these projects, 18F product managers play a different
role than when they’re building a product for a partner. A primary
difference is that besides defining a problem and scoping a Minimum
Viable Product (MVP), we’re also developing a contracting strategy.
This means figuring out what skills we need to look for in a contractor,
doing market research to find out what contractors are capable of, and
determining how we’re going to evaluate contractors who bid. Our
acquisition experts will lead on this work, but product managers might
be involved in drafting an RFP (Request for Proposal) that details the
scope of the work and the skills needed. They may also sit on the
evaluation panel to review potential contractors.

Once a contractor has been selected, the build begins, and the product
manager role might look similar to what was described in the previous post. We will be focused on coaching the Product Owner at
our partner agency and developing their skills. Critically, we’ll
also be providing oversight of the contractor, and ensuring they’re
delivering the best possible work to our partner agency.

When we coach a Product Owner, we work hand-in-hand with them to develop
their roadmap, manage their product backlog, surface obstacles, and
review product increments before they’re shipped. Coaching also includes
helping the Product Owner to work well with the vendor. This might mean
helping them understand the purpose of sprint ceremonies and their role
in them. It likely also means providing input on vendor performance and
advising the Product Owner on how to deliver feedback to the vendor.

Serving as a product manager on an acquisitions project can be
profoundly satisfying work. The folks we work with at our partner
agencies are incredibly savvy and experienced when it comes to program
delivery and government contracting. Partnering with these terrific
public servants to bring modern practices to their digital service
delivery work is an inspiring and rewarding way to serve the public.

Related posts

At 18F, a primary goal we have when working with agency partners to build or buy great digital products is to make sure the agency partner has full ownership over the product and its outcomes by the time we leave the project. One of the ways we build this sense of ownership is by identifying a Product Owner early on.

The Technology Transformation Services (TTS) has been working with the Forest Service in an effort to move their permitting process online. We’ve previously written about how doing this work in the open can benefit other agencies with permit systems. In this post, we’ll focus on why it’s important to have a product owner, what that looks like from the Forest Service’s perspective, and why a product owner is critical to successful projects.

While our consulting work serves the needs of a particular customer, managing one of our products means we are responsible for a shared service used by many of our partners. Managing one of the products and platforms means thinking beyond any individual customer. This work requires that we constantly evaluate market needs, ensure the product matches those needs, and support the business side of product management.